THE EXPEDITION TO EGYPT[6]
[Footnote 6: Boulay de la Meurthe: Le Directoire et
l'expedition d'Egypte. De Villiers du Terrage: Journal et
Souvenirs sur l'expedition d'Egypte. Otherwise as before.]
French Policy Regarding Egypt -- Bonaparte's Use of It -- His
Military Dispositions and Expectations -- His "Complete Code of
Politics" -- The Alternatives He Saw -- Friction Between
Bonaparte and the Directory -- The Fleet and the Army--The
Departure.
Taken in its largest sense, the social life of the world has been due
to the relations of commerce, thought, and religion between the Orient
and the Occident. The short road from one to the other is by way of
the Red Sea, the Isthmus, and the Mediterranean. The controlling site
on that thoroughfare is Egypt. From the crusades onward the domination
of the countries and lands in that great basin was the prize for which
France and England were always contending. Pierre du Bois proposed the
seizure of Egypt to Philip le Bel in the fourteenth century; Leibnitz
sought to draw Louis XIV out of Germany by explaining to him the
dazzling advantage of the same enterprise; d'Argenson suggested the
Suez Canal in 1738; and Choiseul kept alive the plan of occupying
Egypt. The republic had inherited the notion of world conquest which
had occupied both Philip le Bel and Louis XIV, although in another
form. Bonaparte, in the double role of Raynal's disciple and
supplanter of the Revolution, was full of the same idea. It was his
early study of the "Philosophical and Political History of the Two
Indies" which made him, in one of his conversations before Campo
Formio, designate Europe as a mole-hill when compared with the six
hundred millions of men in the East. In these same pages, as in
Plutarch, he had read of Alexander the Great, and had learned to
admire his example; there, too, he was told that with a proper
population and a firm administration Alexandria would rise to greater
eminence than London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome. These opinions
he imbibed and never changed, reiterating them even at St. Helena,
where he confessed that but for the repulse at Acre he would have
founded an Oriental empire. The policy of the Directory was no doubt
partly his; but to a far greater extent it mirrored the feeling abroad
in the entire nation, and among all its agents, that the times were
ripe for the seizure of Egypt. Talleyrand had called the attention of
the Institute to its feasibility, and Magallon, the French consul at
Cairo, filled his despatches with suggestions as to ways and means. By
the spring of 1798 the plan of the Directory was formed and their
preparations were finished. Under Talleyrand's supervision a statement
of policy, with its historical justification, had been made ready for
publication, while the secret outfit of ships and men at Toulon and
other points was complete.
[Sidenote: 1798]
The justification of the expedition to the Sultan and to Europe was
the plea that Egypt no longer belonged to Turkey. Mameluke usurpers
were holding it in disgraceful bondage; France would liberate it. To
enforce this view with the Porte, every insurgent of the steadily
disintegrating Ottoman empire had for months been receiving
encouragement from Bonaparte's letters and agents, and now the grand
vizir was given to understand that if an attempt were made to
interfere with the French forces, these rebels would be unchained in
his rear; on the other hand, he was encouraged to regard the invaders
as auxiliaries to suppress rebellion both on the Danube and on the
Nile. Bonaparte was playing for high stakes; he probably hoped to win
Turkey as an ally, and thus draw Russia and Austria away from France,
but was determined in case of failure to hold Egypt as the French
share when ultimately the expected partition of the Sultan's domains
should be made.
Otherwise it is impossible to explain why he so managed as to leave
France helpless against her Continental enemies; why all the gathered
treasures of Italy and Switzerland were spent in his own preparations;
why almost every general of ability and every regiment of prowess was
destined for Egypt, while in the face of an impending European crash
the national treasury was depleted, the inferior troops at his own
disposal were left at home, and the remaining veterans of Hoche and
Moreau were scattered in various divisions between the Rhine and the
Pyrenees. The Army of England assembled in the north was temporarily
in a state of atrophy. It was kept at Boulogne with depleted ranks,
but ready to be recruited for a landing in England as a subordinate
move, if the British should be overpowered in the Levant and compelled
to divide their fleet. Otherwise, as Bonaparte thought and said after
a visit in February to the shores of the Channel, it would be too
hazardous to attempt a landing in face of the tremendous armament
afloat under the English flag. "To invade England without the mastery
of the seas is an enterprise the boldest and most difficult that has
been undertaken. If it be possible, it is only by a surprise passage
(of the Channel)." He felt that in any case it would be best to spend
the summer in fitting out the fleet at Brest for an invasion of
Ireland during the autumn. Two questions which present themselves in
this connection cannot be answered categorically: Was it of his own
free will that Bonaparte accepted the command of the Egyptian
expedition, or did the directors force it on him? What was the
ultimate design of the great schemer if the imminent war broke out
while the best French troops were in Africa?
In considering the probabilities as to both these queries, it appears
as if Bonaparte had convinced himself that the open assumption of
authority was for the moment impossible. He could not be a director:
candidates for that office must be forty years old. He dared not take
Barras's suggestion and seize the dictatorship, even temporarily,
because the Jacobin members of the Directory made it plain, in certain
very disorderly sessions of that body, that they would not tolerate
such a plan and were strong enough to thwart it. These scenes, which
were not kept secret, and were described in the coffee-houses, led the
Paris populace to suspect Bonaparte. They were enjoying a temporary
repose which it would have been dangerous at the moment for any
aspirant to disturb. It must have seemed plain that a change in the
constitution was essential to anything like the speedy realization of
his personal ambition, which had already taken definite form. As early
as September nineteenth, 1797, Bonaparte wrote Talleyrand a letter
containing what he called his complete code of politics. His
sphinx-like demeanor and the mysterious allusions already quoted from
the festival speech, taken in connection with that outline, confirm
the notion that Talleyrand, Barras, and Sieyes were preparing for a
new constitution, which should be ready for use when the spring
elections had increased the number of royalist delegates, as they were
sure to do, and had thus produced a clash between the executive and
the legislature.
The "complete code of politics" expresses the same contempt for all
antecedent French political speculation as that felt by Sieyes. Even
Montesquieu had but arranged and analyzed the results of his reading
and travels; though doubtless capable, he had done nothing really
constructive. The English had confused the respective functions of the
various powers in government. In view of their history, it was easy to
see why the taxing power was in the House of Commons. But why should
that body also declare war or make peace? Great Britain, being a state
whose constitution was compounded of privileges, "a black ceiling with
a gilt edge," was quite different from France, where these had been
abolished, and all power proceeded directly from the sovereign people.
Why, then, as under the present constitution, should the French
legislature alone have rights which belonged to government in its
totality? This sovereign power, he continued, "naturally falls, I
think, into two magistracies quite distinct: one supervises, but does
not act, and to this what we now call the executive power should be
compelled to submit important measures--the legislation of execution,
so to speak. This great magistracy would be truly the chief council of
the nation; it would have all that part of administration or of
execution which is by our constitution intrusted to the legislative."
This assembly should be numerous, and composed only of men who had
already held positions of public trust. The legislative should make
and change the organic laws, but not in two to three days, as at
present; for after an organic law has once been made operative, it
should not be changed without four or five months of discussion. "This
legislative power, without rank in the Republic, impassive, without
eyes or ears for what is about it, would have no ambition, and would
not inundate us with more than a thousand specific statutes which, by
their absurdity, destroy their own validity, and make us, with three
hundred tomes of laws, a nation without laws." Is this effusion a
recurrence to youthful crudities of ideal politics, or does it hint at
the exercise by that upper magistracy of its unchecked powers through
a single executive agent like himself? Certain it is, this very
concept, though sensibly changed, had a direct influence on the
institutions of the empire.
In the absence of sufficient evidence as to the facts, there is but
one complex theory which explains subsequent occurrences. The Egyptian
expedition, as its commander publicly said in leaving Toulon, was the
right wing of the Army of England; at the same time it was consonant
with the ancient French policy, and appealed to the romantic, Oriental
side of Bonaparte's own temperament; finally, as a practical measure
it gave him a chance to await with distinction the outcome of affairs
in Paris, whether it should be, as he said to Bourrienne, "for a few
months or for six years." At the same time it was an anchor to
windward. In consequence of the Bernadotte incident, the Austrian
plenipotentiaries at Rastadt had refused even the entire left bank of
the Rhine to France, and European sentiment was apparently
consolidating for another coalition. "I go to the Orient," Napoleon
said to Joseph, "with every means to guarantee success. If France
needs me; if the number of those who think like Talleyrand, Sieyes,
and Roederer increases; if war breaks out, and is unlucky for France,
then I shall return, more certain of public opinion than now. If, on
the other hand, the Republic is successful in war; if a political
general like me appears and centers the hopes of the people in
himself, good; then still in the Orient I shall perhaps do greater
service to the world than he."
Everything indicates that in the months immediately (p.~052)
preceding his departure there was friction between Bonaparte and the
Directory. It is said that in one of their sessions, called to
consider the situation, Bonaparte proposed to reknit the negotiations
of Rastadt by himself returning thither, but that Francois was
designated to go in his stead. Thereupon the worn-out scene of
threatening resignation was rehearsed by him once more. "Here is a
pen," said Rewbell; "you need rest." But Merlin snatched it; and as
the furious aspirant, seeing his supremacy jeopardized, left the room,
the others heard the words, "The pear is not yet ripe." "Believe me,
it is good advice I give you," said Barras, in a private interview
immediately after: "leave the country as soon as you can." There was
abundant room for such scenes in a committee which considered as its
own the policy of indirect attack on England through the East, while
all its members were chafing under the dictatorial presence of an
embodied and dissatisfied ambition which Talleyrand declares had
really devised the scheme, but was now uncertain as to which was the
best to take of not two or three, but half a dozen courses. The cast
of the die decided for Egypt. The secrecy of preparation had kept even
the French in doubt. England for a time was entirely misled, and made
the nearly fatal blunder of concentrating her naval force in the
Channel, and of guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean with only
the few ships she could spare, while on the waters of that sea itself
she had virtually no force.
Meantime the great fleet at Toulon, nearly the equal of any which
France had ever launched, was entirely ready. To convoy the four
hundred overloaded transports, there were fifteen ships of the line,
fifteen frigates, seven corvettes, and thirty minor armed vessels. It
was a surprise even to the initiated that at the last moment the
soldiers were found to number not twenty-five thousand, as originally
proposed, but forty thousand, comprising the flower of the republican
armies. Of division generals there were D'Hilliers, Vaubois, Desaix,
Kleber, Menou, Reynier, and Dugua; of brigade generals, Lannes,
Davout, Murat, and Andreossy; of colonels, Marmont, Junot,
Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and Bessieres. The most novel feature of all was
a carefully organized and equipped expedition of a hundred or more
scholars, who, according to what was then the fashion, were destined
to gather the treasures of the Pharaohs and of the Ptolemies for the
collections of Paris. Their apparatus for discovery was the best
obtainable, their learning was at least respectable, and their library
was a mixture of the ancient classics with those of the modern
romanticism, of medieval lore with modern atheism. There were of
course the great military memoirs, of Turenne, Conde, Luxembourg,
Eugene, and Charles XII; more interesting is the inclusion of fifteen
volumes of geography and discovery. Whither bound? Was this another
Alexander? Homer and Vergil jostled Ossian, Ariosto, and Tasso, while
Rousseau's "Heloise" stood neighbor to Goethe's "Werther." Among other
"political" works were Montesquieu, the Vedas, the Koran, and the
Bible. Caroline Bonaparte gave her brother as a farewell gift a little
pocket library, among the volumes of which were Bacon's "Essays," Mme.
de Stael's "Influence of the Passions," and Mercier's "Philosophic
Visions." The curious have examined these volumes, and found in their
well-worn pages a few passages specially marked. In his hours of
solitude the great solitary read in Bacon how he who dominates others
loses his own liberty; in Mme. de Stael how hard it is to keep the
acquisitions of ambition; in Mercier of an Oriental visionary who,
after the glories of temporary success, ended his days in exile and
forgetfulness.
It was on April twelfth that Bonaparte received his final instructions
from the executive. He was to seize Malta, drive the British from all
their Oriental possessions which he could hope to capture, destroy
their factories on the Red Sea, pierce the Isthmus of Suez, improve
the condition of all the native populations, and keep a good
understanding with the Sultan. Meantime from twenty-five to thirty
thousand men were to be assembled at some point on the Channel as a
feint against Great Britain so that her attention should be withdrawn
for the time being from the Mediterranean. The very next day the
departing general deposited with the Directory his secret plan for the
camp at Boulogne and a scheme for the surprise passage. The scholar
troop was ordered to Toulon and the commander-in-chief prepared to
follow. But the Bernadotte incident at Vienna raised the war cloud and
he waited a month until it disappeared from the horizon. Throughout
that period Bonaparte kept the directors on tenterhooks by repeated
offers to return to Rastadt, where he alone could secure reparation
for the insult to the republic in the person of her ambassador. But
the Austrians were unready for another appeal to arms, Thugut offered
reparation, and the dangerous marplot of the Directory was at last
free to remove his troublesome presence from Europe. He left Paris on
the night of May third.